Hello Games frontman Sean Murray doesn’t want to see the studio get locked in a loop of sequalized projects and bloated expectations, but is still shooting for the stars. While speaking with Polygon, Murray spoke about the growth of Hello Games since its early days, as well as the team’s next project that Murray describes as “a huge, ambitious game like No Man’s Sky.” While that phrasing is up for interpretation, the interview does confirm this mystery project is being worked on by a large portion of the studio. While only three members of Hello Games made its most recent release, The Last Campfire, a “big chunk” of the 26 developers at the studio are assigned to this new project while the other half continue on with No Man’s Sky support.
“I knew as a studio I wanted to do the game that No Man’s Sky became eventually, but I was like, what if I never get to make that and what if we just keep doing the next thing and the next thing and life moves on,” says Murray in regards to his itch to keep trying new things. “I was starting to think about having kids and stuff, but I was just like, maybe this is it? Maybe I just find myself on this treadmill forever?” Once one of the most-hyped games of the PS4 era, early expectations of many weren’t met at launch. Subsequent updates freed Hello Games of its shackles and allowed the team to get pretty weird with their pet project. Still, Murray doesn’t appear to regret the trajectory of No Man’s Sky.
“The choice that we had with No Man’s Sky where if I was to go back again, I would find it very difficult to know what the right path was. Where you will have incredible interest in your game, you will have a huge amount of excitement for it.” Murray weighs the appeal of avoiding the hype of No Man’s Sky and sees value, but also loss in just stealth-launching a game into existence. While that approach has apparently been discussed by Murray and his studio, he says that it could mean losing their biggest potential supporters.
“We appealed to a huge amount of people, a lot of whom wouldn’t have known about the game otherwise, right? If we’d stealth-launched it or whatever, some of our biggest fans would never have heard about it.” Regardless, it appears the gears are in motion at Hello Games and that the next big thing on the team’s plate is beginning to take shape.
