No Man’s Sky and the perils of infinite promise
In the near-olden days, when entertainment media were bought in shops rather than beamed on to the constellation of screens that light up our homes, the walk home was always the sweetest. Clutched in a crinkly bag we held the perfect product. Reality cannot compete with the imagined novel, film, album or video game. Our imaginations, worked to frenzy by marketing magicians, summon the best possible version of the work. In the idealised fantasy, dull chapters are trimmed away, duff performances are wiped. Our imaginations free the creators of financial or technical restraints too. There is no special effects budget. No expense is spared. As such, that walk home from the shop, when the box was tangible but the portal to its cloistered reality untraversed, was often the most potent moment in the journey.
Video game-makers struggle in unique ways when it comes to raising audiences' expectations and then matching them in reality. A novelist can promise anything because it costs nothing to conjure a dinosaur, a spaceship, a toppling Eiffel Tower or a galaxy of bees on to the page. Film directors must speak more carefully: their visions come with a price tag. And game-makers, for whom the simplest features can prove inordinately challenging, face the greatest risks. The reputation of Peter Molyneux, a veteran British video game designer, toppled after he habitually promised alluring features (knock an acorn off a tree and over the course of the game you'll be able to watch it grow, he once claimed of Fable) that never surfaced in his games.
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