The Engoodening of No Man's Sky
Why Hacker News recommends it
Frequently recommended as an entertaining account of a failed launch and recovery, especially in threads about Star Citizen and over-promising.
What it is
Internet Historian tells the story of No Man's Sky, from its over-hyped and badly received launch to years of updates by Hello Games that redeemed the game. It is a long, comedic mini-documentary.
Recommended by 9 HN commenters across 9 different months, 2020 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec rgoulter · 2020-08 · on “Star Citizen Alpha 3.10”
Speaking of pre-release hype for over-promised scope, Internet Historian's "The Engoodening of No Man's Sky" is surprisingly a well told, heart-warming (albeit quite long) video telling the story of No Man's Sky, how it got so hyped, and the good-faith steps the developers took to do their best to make good on their promises. [this video]
Strong rec cletus · 2022-02 · on “Star Citizen will limit its roadmap, as players are getting upset over delays”
Watching Star Citizen has been a hobby for me like watching a train wreck is painfully slow motion. It came about at the same time as the revival of a beloved franchise Elite in the form of Elite Dangerous. ED didn't have the budget SC does but it stuck to quite narrow development goals and shipped years ago. It's progressively added updates, patches and expansions since. No Man's Sky is vaguely in the same vein and had a terrible launch (I highly recommend this video [1]) but, to their credit, Hello Games has plugged away at NMS adding more content and updates to the point where it's an enjoyable experience now and has a loyal fan base. But SC? By God. It's like a progenitor for NFT scams.
Strong rec jmyeet · 2023-02 · on “Bay 12 Games has made $7M from the Steam release of Dwarf Fortress”
I'm super happy for these guys. They really have struggled with donations for many years. It's nice to see them get the bag. For those commenting on the sales drop off, it is a problem for AAA titles that a half-finished product gets sold to the public and then abandoned because it's easier to just move onto the next thing. But I want to counter that with the story of No Man's Sky. I highly recommend the Internet Historian video on it [1]. The short version is for various reasons the game over-promised and under-delieved on launch but Sean and HelloGames have now spent years continuing to develop the game with free and significant updates. I can only imagine this still drives sales growth or
Strong rec csense · 2025-04 · on “Cozy video games can quell stress and anxiety”
Internet Historian made an amazing documentary on how the game's changed over the years [1]. They're still making massive changes to the game! If it's been years since you played it, you should give it a try. There have been a lot of bug/crash fixes, new mechanics, even redoing some core game systems (I think they recently made some big changes to planet generation). [1] [this video]
Recommends Asooka · 2020-02 · on “Spore Prototypes (2008)”
NMS had problems of a completely different character at launch. Once they fixed the bugs, added the features that were missing and did a lot of polish, people really like the game. It's very well-received now. Here's a short story of how and why it had a bad launch [this video] .
Recommends cletus · 2021-06 · on “Star Citizen Progress Tracker v1.0”
Star Citizen is a cautionary tale about how too much money can be a curse. Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous came around at roughly the same time but Elite has been a complete game for years. Elite did things right in the sense that they released a complete game and added to it. I've seen videos on Star Citizen talking about new systems they're adding like being put in prison and escaping and all I can think of is that this sounds cool but why are you spending any effort on this before you have a core game? star Citizen development just seems to be completely unfocused with periodic sales of ships to top up the coffers. How much better could it have been had they decided on core features that
Recommends snowgrove · 2022-02 · on “Worms or bust: The story of Britain’s most tenacious indie games company (2016)”
I love Worms, but if there’s a runner-up for “Britain’s most tenacious indie games company” then surely it is Hello Games. They launched No Man’s Sky in 2016 to universal disappointment and fan outrage, but kept working on it post-launch (under extreme stress and with little income to speak of) for years until they met & exceeded fan’s original expectations. Gratified fans eventually paid to put up a “Thank you Hello Games” billboard on a road near their office. The whole story is incredible and worth your time: [this video]
Recommends lyu07282 · 2023-06 · on “No Man's Sky Now on Mac”
Just in the off-chance that anyone hasn't seen this: [this video] it goes over this entire saga from failure at launch to massive success