The price of the game seems to be the biggest issue for most. While the amount of content offered in “No Man’s Sky” is obviously huge, a lot of it is procedural, and it’s not clear exactly how far that $60 will take the average player.
Some are reporting that they have already spent dozens of hours roaming around the game’s world though, so from that perspective, they have probably gotten their money’s worth already.
Of course, not everyone uses time played as a metric for satisfaction, especially for a large-ticket purchase like that. But in the end, if someone manages to spend that much time in a game and claims to not have enjoyed it, there must be something else going on that they are not being honest about.
It’ll surely take a few months until we find out exactly what people think of “No Man’s Sky”, and whether all the hype preceding the release of the game was justified. Many claim to have changed their attitudes towards preordering games though, as they are apparently feeling a bit burned out by the title. We can’t blame them if they haven’t found any satisfaction in the game, but hopefully this won’t discourage other developers from trying similar interesting ideas in the future, and taking major risks. After all, without the risk factor, this game would not be a fraction of what it is right now.