About a year and a half after his nervous VGX presentation of his "mid-life crisis," Hello Games founder Sean Murray can finally pen down the number of possible planets in his upcoming video game No Man's Sky: 18 quintillion. That's 18 followed by 18 zeros.
The procedurally generated space exploration game showed promise coming out of the 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) and Murray's dreamt-up universe looks like something gamers will get to play soon.
"If a new planet was discovered every second after the game comes out," said Murray, "it would take 584 billion years to visit every one just for a second."
There's still no release date set for Hello Games' No Man's Sky, but the indie studio, which has brought out Sony's charitable side, recently announced that the game will launch on PC and PlayStation 4 at the same time. The little studio of 13 employees has wisely kept its timeline for release private and that may be fueling the anticipation for the game.
"When we showed the game off first, we definitely had a lot of hype around it," Murray said. "Hype is different [from] excitement. It's almost scary to a developer. Hype is an unattainable level of excitement. It will always lead to disappointment."
While Murray isn't exactly saying perception of No Man's Sky has changed, it has. The game's endgame was tipped before E3 2015—make it to the center of the universe—but Hello Games has elaborated a bit more on what the entire experience can and will entail.
"We're not trying to recreate our universe but there are black holes, there are dead planets," said Murray. "Sometimes for demos we'll crank up the number of lush planets because we're trying to quickly show people. But actually in our universe, this one ... most things are a little bit barren. Finding life is a big deal, a cool moment, and we want that in our game."
There are mechanisms built into the game to moderate the experience and to nudge players toward the endgame and off some cool planet he or she has decided to colonize. With enough space for every player to name his or her own planet and lifeforms, Hello Games wants to encourage gamers to work together to eventually reach the center of the universe.
"There's a reward for every piece of information that you share, but you've got to judge whether it's as good as keeping it to yourself. You could be the only one to find a certain type of ship," said Murray. "It's an interesting experiment for when the game comes out."
In No Man's Sky, players will encounter good and bad people, hostile and neutral fauna and hospitable and inhospitable planets. With enough room for 18 quintillion planets, No Man's Sky is the world's biggest sandbox and its hype has turned into excitement.
"As a developer it's cool to feel that I don't know everything there is to see," said Murray.
