The importance of getting it right the first time (Gaming)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Tuesday, August 09, 2016, 22:29 (3032 days ago) @ Kermit

First of all, I'm fairly certain NMS requires an Internet connection to play (can anyone confirm/correct me on that?)

It does not. You can play completely offline. (In fact, there's at decent amount of folks on the subreddit that can't connect to the server, but are happily playing).

These people are outliers. I mean no offense, but connectivity is the norm in 2016 (the vast majority of consoles are connected to the internet), and this has affected the delivery of digital product, including games. There are downsides to this way of doing things, like the preservation of history (we've definitely discussed this here in the context of playing Destiny 20 years from now), but for better or worse, physical game discs are on their way out, and the awkwardness of day one patches are a symptom of the fact that we are in a transition. I say this as someone who likes physical objects and likes having an archive that isn't dependent on the internet. On the other hand, I like how malleable games are now, and how easily they can change or be fixed. (Destiny, for one example, has changed how I look at this.)

People can say the version of No Man's Sky on the disc is canon or whatever but they're not describing the game that most will play. Prompts to update software are ubiquitous to anyone with a smart phone. People are accustomed to it. Being indignant about it at this point is a bit like being indignant about the lack of pay phones relative to 1995.

After reading statements from Hello Games about offline play, I can see some legitimacy is believing this game could exist solely offline. I think you have to reconcile this with their statement that the unpatched game is not the finished game, though. Although playing offline removes one of the game's selling points (the world may see what you discover and name), this does seem to be a nice compromise for the historical longevity. The game can be updated and improved, and one day in the distant future, as long as you have the game on a hard drive somewhere it can be played without needing a server.