Limitless Sky: No Man's Sky Unofficial Discovery Guide
LIMITLESS SKY THE ORIGINS OF NO MAN’S SKY Looking at No Man’s Sky it’s easy to assume that it’s the creation of a massive team of developers from a studio with a track record of producing massive open-world games The reality is much different and far more interesting Before it wowed the world with the prospect of discovering an entirely new universe Hello Games found success in a charming little game about a motorcycle stuntman fi ery hoops devoured by ravenous sharks or other career-ending failures The game was a success and the small team worked on bringing it to the Xbox 360 They also hired a few more employees and began work on its sequel Joe Danger 2 The Movie The follow-up added more variety to the formula giving Joe more vehicles to choose from and dropping him into a variety of different movie-style action sequences Hello Games was founded in 2009 in Guildford England The town located a quick train ride away from London is a hotbed of English game development it has served as home to game studios that have created top-tier titles such as Burnout LittleBigPlanet Fable and many others After working at a variety of Guildford studios four developers Ryan Doyle Grant Duncan Sean Murray and Dave Ream decided to break away from larger companies and form their own indie studio Audiences seemed to like Joe Danger and what Hello Games was doing but Murray programmer and studio co-founder was growing restless He had what he later described as a bit of a breakdown and worried that the new studio which he and his friends had founded to express their own creativity was heading down an all-too familiar path After Joe Danger 2 what would come next Joe Danger 3 Joe Danger 4 As much as he loved the little guy it wasn’t a future he was thrilled about That studio became Hello Games and its fi rst title was the PlayStation 3 game Joe Danger The side scrolling action game released in the summer of 2010 featured the titular stuntman in a series of escalating feats of derring-do Players had to time their motorcycle’s jumps and calculate their landings to score big and avoid getting scorched by Murray set up a private offi ce within the studio and for a year worked on a secret project once his work on Joe Danger 2 was fi nished He created another new game engine but this was far more advanced than the one he had worked on with Joe Danger Joe Danger gave players the thrill of being a stuntman This new project would possibly give players an entire universe Eventually Murray took Duncan and Doyle aside and explained what he was working on Until then it had been clouded in mystery For years Murray had been fascinated with games such as Elite which let players explore space and forge their own paths 8 Th is book is not authorized sponsored endorsed or licensed by Hello Games Limited Th e trademark No Man’s Sky is owned by Hello Games Limited and other company names and or trademarks mentioned in this book are the property of their respective companies and are used for identifi cation purposes only
No Man’s Sky Discovery Guide Th is book is not authorized sponsored endorsed or licensed by Hello Games Limited Th e trademark No Man’s Sky is owned by Hello Games Limited and other company names and or trademarks mentioned in this book are the property of their respective companies and are used for identifi cation purposes only 9
LIMITLESS SKY 10 Th is book is not authorized sponsored endorsed or licensed by Hello Games Limited Th e trademark No Man’s Sky is owned by Hello Games Limited and other company names and or trademarks mentioned in this book are the property of their respective companies and are used for identifi cation purposes only
No Man’s Sky Discovery Guide He’d wanted to be an astronaut for a time and games turned out to be the next best thing What if he could live that childhood fantasy through his own creation The three of them expanded work on the project which was called Project Skyscraper Hello Games is a small studio but that core team wanted to work on this exciting new game in isolation They took what seems like an extreme measure and set up a studio within the studio complete with its own locks and entrance They decorated this new space with covers of old sci-fi paperbacks fi lled with fantastical visions of far-fl ung planets and alien ships These would provide inspiration while the team worked on what would become No Man’s Sky Murray says that it’s easy to see their isolation as an act of selfi shness especially when the rest of the team was so desperate to learn what their co-workers were toiling away on but that it was ultimately one of generosity The people at Hello Games are more than co-workers they’re friends Even now that the team has grown to just over a dozen or so people it’s a tight-knit group Murray wanted the game to be more than just a kernel of an idea before he shared it with them He wanted to impress them with a clear vision for what exactly they’d been working on all this time That moment came in 2013 when the studio was given the chance to debut the game at the VGX 2013 game awards It was a big opportunity guaranteed to give the fl edgling game plenty of attention from gamers and the games press Murray and his team agreed and then it was time for them to show the rest of the group at Hello Games what they’d been working on in secrecy for several years The response was one of awe as they were shown the trailer for the game and got presentations on Th is book is not authorized sponsored endorsed or licensed by Hello Games Limited Th e trademark No Man’s Sky is owned by Hello Games Limited and other company names and or trademarks mentioned in this book are the property of their respective companies and are used for identifi cation purposes only 11
