Would you still be impressed?

I don't rent, buy, or go see a movie in theaters without knowing at least something about what it is about and who made it. Same for games. I don't play a game without first knowing something about it. So, for me, your question is pretty nonsensical as I would not even have the chance to be impressed if I didn't have the chance to learn about the game and its creators before hand.

Is it really so bad that maybe some people like a procedurally generated game? I kinda feel like your that guy in that one XKCD comic:

But I'm not impressed anyway. My nephew shows me his drawings of pokemon, and they're really bad. I tell him, and he cried a little bit at first, now he just doesn't ask me. I mean, they're fine for a kid, but luckily, I take everything at completely face value, and expel all context, so I can see that his drawings are objectively terrible, and I let him know: he should see it as well.

Reminds me of my last girlfriend, too. All her cooking was horrible. I kept telling her "This is awful. It needs some milk," and so on, and asking for meat. It just doesn't make sense why she would cook such awful food. I mean, she told me she was a vegan and all we had was a microwave, but she was terrible. The worst part is that sometimes I'd go visit her house and she would have food ready, and it would be something I didn't want, like pilaf. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I don't like pilaf, nobody likes pilaf. I can't believe she would do something like that.

Anyway, I had to break up with her. She kept making this cheap food and lived in a tiny apartment and had a car that was too small. I kept telling her she needed to move to a bigger house, but she never did. Completely insane. She makes such awful decisions. She tried to explain it away as paying off student loans and not making enough money for good stuff like a house, but who cares? Why should I take that into account? Context is worthless.

If I could still fly from the surface, up into space. Yeah, I'd probably be impressed. Always wanted to do that in a game.

Personally, I fall into the same camp as others in that I rarely buy a game or watch a movie without learning a bit about it first.
So while I don't totally buy into the premise of your point, I do think the nature of "how something is made" is being used to unfairly market some games, movies, etc.

As I often due, I tend to place the majority of the blame on publishers and the media who often act as pawns of the publishers, but also on gamers and how we set expectations. When the first No Man's Sky trailer was released, every post on every site made a huge deal about the 4-person dev team and the procedurally generated content. And rightfully so. For gaming industry "insiders" (anyone who makes or plays games and has an interest in how they're made), the nature of No Man's Sky's development is noteworthy. The problem is that the media (and readers) often seem to confuse "noteworthy" with "HYPE". Rather than treat NMS as an interesting game worth paying attention to, it got blown into "the next big thing". Even when the media made supposed efforts to calm expectations, they did so in sensational ways. I've lost track of how many times I read phrases like "we'll have to wait and see what the gameplay loop actually entails", while the developers had already been very open about the scavaging/survival oriented gameplay loop. The media treated NMS as some sort of mystery even as the developers were clearly and plainly telling people what kind of game they were making. Even after launch, the lack of any true multiplayer component is treated like a discovery, when the devs openly told us months ago that you can't meet other players.

Finally, I think there is 1 element of No Man's Sky that is actively misleading: the price point. Let's say I'm just an average gamer who doesn't read articles and watch a bunch of preview coverage. I saw a couple trailers and thought "that looks really cool!", so I buy NMS. Videogames have a sort of built-in "expectation calibrator": selling price. Even if I know absolutely nothing about a new game, I can look at the price and get an idea of the sort of game I'm buying (in terms of size, complexity, and polish). With a $60 game, I expect a certain level of polish and production value. In this regard, No Man's Sky is very misleading. I'm not going to get into issues of value proposition or "hours of fun" or anything like that, because I don't ultimately think that stuff can or should be used to determine selling price. I've had more hours of fun with many $1 mobile games than some $60 blockbusters. To me, the real determining factor of price point is the scale of production and polish.
No Man's Sky is a massive game in terms of "theoretical content" (although the actual gameplay is mostly identical from planet to planet). But it is absolutely NOT a $60 in terms of presentation, mechanical depth, or polish.

So in that regard, I do think some of the "conflict" around the reception of NMS could have been entirely avoided. Ultimately, Sony and the gaming media did a disservice to the game.

I'm enjoying the game immensely for whatever reasons. Should it matter whether the circumstances surrounding its development and release color my opinion? I'm having fun, and that's all I care about.

I think games are art, but when it turns into these sorts of "you can only look at it like this" attitudes and we forget that, art or not, games are mainly just about providing "fun" (however you define that), I tune out.

Which is why you can take a urinal, put it in a museum and it becomes art.

The context of a piece of art, be it, social, technical or political is often far more important to the meaning we derive rather than the art object itself.

Man, I’m with you. I’ve got a contrarian streak and the more people seem to like a creative work, the more suspicious I am that it’s an emperor’s new clothes situation. This is especially true, in my case, with movies. For example, I think many “art house” movies are just as insipid and manipulative of their intended audience as anything at the cineplex (Captain Fantastic is one recent example). And every Oscar season I believe at least half the movies are nominated not because they’re all that, but because a) it’s this or that actor or director’s “turn” (they were snubbed in years past when they should not have been—the Oscars are always playing catch-up), b) the cult of the Actor’s Studio (Leo fits this mold) overly influences everyone, or c) so-and-so adequately depicts an afflicted or downtrodden person or political icon (playing to the Academy’s sympathies).

As others have pointed out, context and culture do affect the perception of any art—it’s a little useless to stop it from happening, and believe you me, I spent a large portion of my academic career arguing the point of view that, if we’re going to consider culture, the contemporaneous culture is what should be considered first (just stating where my sympathies lie). Author’s intent also matters to me, and I think in the case of No Man’s Sky, if we consider the creators’ intent, the game fairs pretty well. The problem comes where people’s expectations don’t match what the creators set out to create, and I think that’s the biggest problem with No Man’s Sky, but that’s a context problem that cuts both ways. Regarding me or anyone else enjoying the game in part because of extra-game knowledge, I confess I am grading it on a curve, and I’m also admitting how my extra-game knowledge affects my immersion in a positive way. It’s inarguable that immersion is something the game is going for, and it’s hard to deny that this game is different in a crucial way that gives it an advantage over a traditionally designed game. To answer your question, though, I think I’d still be impressed knowing nothing about the game, but I would wonder two things—how big is it, and how did they do this? There’s no freaking boundaries and everything is seamless! I mean, WTH? I think anyone would deduce it was procedurally generated if they know of the concept.

And this is an argument about what people know. You can’t stop people from knowing things, whether it’s “this game is made by the same team that made LIMBO” or “this is what constitutes Halo’s canon up until Reach.” I said I was with you, but I’ve realized that the “the art by itself isn’t that good” argument is attractive to me when I’m not fond of something, but I usually find that all the stuff surrounding the art endlessly fascinating if I like the work (can’t get enough of that Last of Us documentary). Given two things of equal merit, I will often detract from the thing I see as overpraised and praise the thing I see as underappreciated. Recognizing my own hypocrisies I find that I have less energy to spend trying to tell people why they’re wrong to like what they like. (My motivation to do the latter probably hasn’t ever matched yours, though--I’ve never spent money on a domain for that purpose.) You ask interesting questions about the fairness of considering what’s outside the game, but these questions are undercut by two things a) the impossibility of art speaking solely for itself, and b) our foreknowledge of your usual agenda. I find the irony of b funny.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the decay of method acting in Hollywood. It is now about ego, about visibly showing the dedication to acting, and such displays garner awards. But I think it extends to the audience too. Does knowing Leo went through hellish conditions color your view of his performance?

Let me ask you this. Imagine that you know nothing about No Man's Sky. You are completely unaware of the procedural generation. You have no clue there are 16 quintillion planets. You have no idea it was made by 4 people. All you know about the game is what's presented as you play… as far as you are concerned this planet you start on was created like any other space in video games.

Would you still be impressed?

I would be fucking FLOORED. Seriously, you can just point yourself in a direction and walk. For hours. And there will constantly be new things popping up all around you to explore. Designing a single world of that size in the traditional way would have taken someone years upon years to complete. And then you go into space and there aren't just more worlds in your system to visit, but billions of other systems!?!! Holy fuck. Ho-leee fuuuuuuck.

This game is a watershed moment in video game design. It's a landmark. A triumph. An incredible achievement.

And - contrary to the very loud hype monsters - it's really, really fun.