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jug  ·  3423 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What upcoming video games are you looking forward to?

Yes, I worry about this too. I've seen some very excited No Man's Sky communities and I think a big deal here is how easy it is to confuse procedurally generated content with "immense content". Procedural generation is about introducing variations, but it still needs a hand crafted set to pick from. Otherwise the universe can well be packed with stuff, but in boring variations. If you roll a dice, there are usually six possibilities for the outcome, but you're still just looking at a dice.

So I try to be cautiously optimistic about the game. I of course want it to succeed, but I try to keep in mind that this will still just be a computer game from a small game developer company with limited resources. In the end, I think it will be a game similar to a "god game" or maybe a Roguelike, or something like that. A sandbox game which can be fun to spend some time with now and then. I don't think it will revolutionize the industry and I don't think procedural generation will. It is not even a new concept.