No Man's Sky's Economy and Trading Get New Details

No Man's Sky developer Hello Games has shared some new information about how you'll trade, craft, and buy objects and materials in the game.

In an interview with IGN, managing director Sean Murray described the trading and crafting in the game, revealing that players will be able to choose how they want to interact with the economy.

For example, if you want to go down onto planets and gather materials, crafting them into objects to later sell at spaceports, you can do that. To craft, players must discover different chemical elements on planets, gather them, and then figure out how to put them together. Murray stated that the developer isn't giving formulas for crafting to players; rather, they generally must stumble across functional combinations on their own.

But if you don't ever even want to set foot on a planet and only wish to roam space, you can still make money. Murray explained that there is a free-market economy in the game, meaning that items have variable prices at different spaceports. This allows players to buy up items at one port and travel to another to sell them at a higher price.

No Man's Sky's economy also operates without player involvement. AI-controlled characters travel between planets and spaceports, bringing material up to be sold and traded. They transport material into frigates to be taken to other systems. Murray remarked that one of his favorite activities in-game is just to sit in space and watch the economy progress around him. "I often like to just sit there [in space]," he said. "It's quite nice... you get to sit there and watch the trade economy in motion."

No Man's Sky is planned for release sometime this year on PlayStation 4 and PC. At E3 this year, Murray told GameSpot that upon death in-game, players might be met by a Jaden Smith motivational quote. Keep an eye on GameSpot for more news about No Man's Sky as it becomes available.