Somehow, it's been ten years since No Man's Sky launched. 2016 was certainly a simpler time, and looking back on the space exploration sim, Hello Games managing director Sean Murray has some sage words for his younger self.
"I would tell that guy, don't do all the press and stuff like that that you're doing," he tells GamesRadar+. "Guess what? You never wanted to do press and be a sort of frontman. You don't enjoy it, you won't enjoy it, and you also won't be very good at it."
He points out this is going back further than 12 years, to 2014, when the press for No Man's Sky started to ramp up. The game was a regular at showcases and trade shows, usually with Murray in tow, who did plenty of interviews across print, online, and television.
Hello Games enjoyed the double-edged sword of producing a game that captured people's imaginations, and then having to go out and publicly represent it. Promotion can be exhausting, and Murray believes he was always better served at his desk.
"Just avoid that whole thing and stick to just making games and coding," he says. Coming back to the present, he points out that Hello Games has become a much more mysterious entity. Very little is actually known about upcoming release Light No Fire, and that's a result of lessons learned from No Man's Sky
"We've lived that over the ten years since, right? That has been a big change in my life, right? Where I haven't chatted to any press in like four, four or five years or something," he says. "The most communication we do now is the occasional emoji or whatever, and that suits me just fine. I'm much better at just sticking to development.
Don't expect those vague teases to end any time soon. To be fair, when your game is the second most-wishlisted on Steam, you can take a chill pill.
