No Man's Sky devs... What's their secret?

How is it possible that a game with that kind of scope can be made by 4 people? What do you think their secret is?

There are many possibilities.

-They have some really powerful, but simple and easy to use engine.

-They are actually secretly getting help from more people.

-They are actually really freaking talented devs and hard workers.

-A combination of 1 and 3

-It's not actually nearly as robust as it seems.

What do you guys think?

I'm guessing the lack of a big name publisher breathing down their necks certainly helps. But at the same time, they probably have a much smaller budget because of that.

I'd say they're just talented and have a very specific idea of what they want. But we haven't seen much of the game so it's hard to tell, the game could be really great on paper and the trailer could look nice but the full game could be a repetitive grind for all we know.

We also don't know how long it's been in development for do we? this could be years in the making

Yea, the 4 man team is what worries me. It seems too ambitious for its own good.

graphics are very simple and the planets look barren.

My worry too. The execution could still leave a lot to be desired and from my experience randomly generated stuff ends up feeling samey pretty quickly

I hope it is everything it seems to be though, it sounds amazing

They're actually bothered to try?

What exactly do you DO in that game? Just fly around looking at stuff and shooting at asteroids?

The graphics look great! What ya chatting aboot?

@Netherscourge: Ain't much know about that yet. A gun is shown in the trailer though, and there are enemies to fight.

I didn't even know about this game and now it's more interesting (or worrysome) that it's a 4 man team.

The scope of the game from the ocean to flying through the atmosphere in real time is pretty huge.
They'll have more than just 4 guys now with all the publicity coming of it.

My completely amateur guess

1.Clear cut vision of what they want to do

2.Chose a great art style rather than trying to make everything super detailed with lots of assets

3.Talented

4.Good tools and understanding how how to use them

5.No big name publisher making them do something stupid like a tacked on multiplayer or a tough looking main character to put on the cover.

And probably lots and lots of coffee.

They probably only made one planet that re-generates if you go too far. I bet when you leave the first planet and fly to another one, the old one dies while the new one you land on randomally loads up. Its a trick.

gremlins...lots of gremlins

Procedural generation.

No Man's Sky trailer looks ugly ....... don't understand what's the hype around it

ps: Flower .... from That Game Company looks better

Uh... procedural content. All they have to do is design a set of parameters for planet creation and their work is done. So instead of needing a team of 1000 to achieve their goals, they can easily do it with four.

Bethesda made Daggerfall over 150,000 km², requiring literally two weeks to cross the land surface, with procedural methods. I'm not sure why you find this so surprising.

@Netherscourge: It's simple-mindedness like this that kills hype for games that have less-than revealing teaser trailers. You don't think about the possibilities that these mechanics could allow for? Do you like Call of Duty by chance?

@hippiesanta: You gotta be pretty dim to not understand why it's being hyped, whether you personally like the look of it or not.

I've been fooled enough times to know that hype means nothing, this game has an equally good chance at being a flaming turd. Look at all the games on steam that looking freaking amazing in the trailers and turn out to be garbage