Daymeeuhn wanted to enjoy procedural universe game No Man’s Sky on his own. No secrets revealed, nothing to be Googled, not a single spoiler in sight. He spent more than $US1300 ($1709) to make it happen. And then he nearly spoiled it for everyone else.
Daymeeuhn (probably not his real name) describes himself as someone who works in the gaming industry and is very passionate about the medium. He managed to purchase a copy of No Man’s Sky off eBay from somebody who broke street date for the average, completely perfunctory and not at all eyes-popping-clear-out-of-my-skull price of $US1302.95 ($1713).
No Man’s Sky will be out on August 9.
That might sound a little excessive, but Daymeeuhn put it this way in a Reddit thread:
“I’m a lucky guy,” he said. “I’ve done well for myself. I have disposable income and I’m happy in life. I’m in a state of being where I don’t look at a purchase and determine the overall value by the price tag, but rather by how much happiness it will bring myself or the people I care about. I’m also very much in a weird state of mind half the time in that I’ve seen some shit, and I’ve dealt with loss, and I know all too well that too many of us take life for granted. I could die in a car accident tomorrow — who knows?”
He added that, for him, an early copy of a game like No Man’s Sky is gaming nirvana. It’s just him and the game. No spoilers, no tips from friends, no temptations to seek help.
“I’m a gamer that enjoys the journey,” he explained. “For me, the idea of secrets and puzzles that lack google-able answers is super thrilling. I love it. My best gaming experiences have been when I’ve received games before street date, knowing I was truly on my own in the universe of that game, and no matter how tempted I might be to ask a friend for help or check a website for a tip or cheat, I CAN’T because it doesn’t exist.”
No Man’s Sky, though, has the weight of the gaming world’s curiosity on its shoulders. Over the past couple years, it’s been subjected to such ludicrous levels of hype that, if said hype were gamma radiation, we’d all be Hulks by now. People want to know what this game is really like.
So Daymeeuhn decided to share his experience with people. Per ancient Internet tradition, he started with your standard unboxing video. At that point, he wasn’t even sure if the game he bought was real. He had to be certain.
He popped it into a PS4. It worked.
By that point, communities like Reddit were losing their minds. Despite initial reluctance, Daymeeuhn caved and decided to post some videos of the game itself. “I kept my first vids short intentionally,” he told me via DMs. “I didn’t want to start delving in to new spoilery stuff too quickly, and I wanted to experience some of that myself first before posting videos to make sure I wasn’t going too far. It was never my intention to fully spoil the game, but rather just give the ‘every man’ vibe of the game that so many people wanted to see.”
YouTube and Twitch, of course, were no-goes for Daymeeuhn’s videos. Even on sites like Dailymotion, they didn’t stay up for long. Still, they spread to various corners of the No Man’s Sky-obsessed Internet, and people picked them apart like vultures mixed with hyenas mixed with the little grabby tool from the boardgame Operation (which is probably a creature that can actually occur in No Man’s Sky).
Other fans weren’t too happy that somebody had busted open a potential spoiler pinata more than a week before the game’s official release. But some of the folks watching the videos countered that Hello Games has been too hush-hush with No Man’s Sky for them to make an informed purchasing decision. Unedited footage like Daymeeuhn’s is exactly what they needed.
Hello Games founder Sean Murray took to Twitter to express his disappointment with the whole situation.
Take a break from reading about it, and picking vids apart. You can experience for yourself so soon.
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) July 29, 2016
For Daymeeuhn, that was a sort of breaking point.
“I expected Sean to tweet negatively about it because, let’s face it, it’s his job to,” Daymeeuhn told me. “Obviously developers of a game don’t like that early copies make their way out. But I’ll admit, after watching so many of his interviews and knowing how cool of a guy he seems, it did make me feel a bit guilty. It wasn’t the sole reason for my decision [to stop posting videos], but it was certainly a factor.”
Shortly after Murray tweeted about the whole incident, Daymeeuhn edited his post on the No Man’s Sky subreddit to explain that he was done being the big bad bearer of spoilers.
“HG and Sean don’t like it, it’s giving me a headache dealing with the fallout, I don’t want to be the guy that spoiled all this cool shit and I’m just leaving it at that!” he wrote. “I hope you like those first videos! But for now, I’m going to just play the game, keep to myself and enjoy it.”
“I’ll say this,” he added. “Spoilers will come, one way or another. It may not be from me, but it will be from someone. But I wish no one ill will. I just wanted to share the discovery with you all.”
Daymeeuhn still plans to post written impressions at some point, but they will be spoiler-tagged and nowhere near as revealing as a boatload of videos.
I asked Daymeeuhn if, after all the hubbub and hassle, he’s still happy with his purchase. He replied:
“Absolutely not regretting it, and even if the game was an absolute bomb — which it is not — I still wouldn’t regret it. This isn’t the sort of decision where you make it and hope you get your ‘money’s worth’ out of it. The journey on finding out just how good the game is is all part of the experience. Even if it doesn’t live up to your wildest expectations, you have to know that coming into it and accept that’s all part of the process. So far, I’m having a lot of fun playing it.”
Comments
25 responses to “Guy Starts Leaking No Man’s Sky Videos, Changes His Mind Because He Doesn’t Want To Spoil People”
I watched it, didnt have any doubts i was gonna love the game but it was still great to seem some raw unscripted footage just to solidify my decision.
Pineapples right?
made me a little sad that in all likely hood ill probably never see one for myself
I can’t imagine there is anything to spoil. The marketing campaign for this game has been to be as vague as possible and let rumours run wild. I think it will have very little in the way of plots or gameplay besides flying to planets and naming things and upgrading your stuff.
Yeah, given the way content is generated and the way the game is played I’m questioning how it’s even possible to have spoilers. I mean it’s a bit like saying photos of France are spoilers for Europe.
That’s what I have noticed most about the hype surrounding No Mans Sky, it’s nearly entirely player driven.
They show a video of a guy flying a ship and naming a dinosaur, within hours people are talking about features not even hinted at, it’s insane.
I’m willing to put money on it being craptastic, nobody who makes a good game is silent about the actual features.
Sadly.. This. Nearly bought a PS4 this week for it. I love scifi and this ticks all the boxes, but why play this solo with much incentive when I can play coop minecraft witg my kids?
I think there just isnt going to be as much to do as people hope.. I dont think other building games have enough to do now!
Maybe they just planned to show a bit of footage to generate some interest, but instead people started saying it was the greatest game ever made, so they just cut their losses and closed the PR shop.
Or perhaps they had a marketing strategy that involved a slow roll out information to keep the budget tight, except the internet exploded when they saw a guy scan a bush and fly through a cloud.
With it hitting full saturation in one go, they put the budget back in to the game.
Your explanation is prob right, but we can hope.
That is unless the game developers want to keep said features a surprise for people playing the game. Alas, almost all developers don’t have the luxury of doing this, as they’re too in tow with their signed publisher.
To quote the guy who bought that copy of NMS:
As a game dev, that’d be the kind of experience you really want to give. Hello Games seem to be in a position to try and offer that.
Of course, having said that, they haven’t been silent on many features, but that’s probably because Sony required them to give up some details.
I strongly suspect I’m burnt to cynicism around preorders and hype. I now relish leaked videos and game reviews by non-ign websites to allow me to buy aware of what I’m getting into.
I also wonder if it’s plot secrets they are trying to protect or just preorders…. See cynicism!
If people are worried about not knowing enough about the game to make an informed decision about buying it then why not just wait and see.
$1700 for NMS o_O
Here i am bitching about paying $82 for it on Steam.
$62aud on GOG
Was surprised to see the GOG local price is AU$62, even though their American price is US$59. Makes me feel more inclined to spring for it, just in case it’s an error or something 😛
I considered buying it from GOG but 99% of my gaming library is on Steam.
It sucks that only Steam and GOG had the game available, i could have gotten it at around $60 from GMG if they had it.
I feel kind of similar, except I buy my games DRM-free from Humble, making a new account for GOG is an effort hurdle. Bugs me when there’s games that are on GOG but are Steam-only on Humble, but it’s not like I haven’t got plenty of other stuff to play.
Sean did live in Australia for a while, and credits the experience as part of what gave him the idea for the game. Perhaps he hates the Aus tax as much as most other Aussies.
Is there not some way the devs could shut the ability to play down server side? Considering the game procedurally generates content and sends it to the servers for storage I would think they could just… Turn em off?
I think that not too many copies leaked so they don’t particularly care, They have proberly handed out copies to loved ones and friends and much like Damion in this article wanted them to have a spoiler free experience.
you can play offline, the seeds for everything are on the disc, online is for uploading discoveries and the tiny chance you may come across someone
The game can be played fully offline. The procedural generation comes from all the maths stored on the disk, the stuff that gets sent to the server (if playing online) is when you name a planet or animal.
EDIT: Haha, nadoay beat me to it, they must have replied after i’d loaded the page.
Just like Spore. Remember that game?
And unlike Spore, you probably won’t have to play through five half-assed mini games. Hopefully it’s four asses.
No, my name is not Dr. Mephesto.
Unfortunately every world in this games entire universe has the same boring pastel colour pallet
I think it will grow stale pretty fast. There might be an infinite number of worlds, but there will be a very finite number of 3D assets. After a while the player will be able to recognise them all. No matter what pastel colour they come in.
This. Just like the original Borderlands and its ten trillion guns.