Blog (Zoe) - Gameplay (Patreon)

I’m not being dramatic in calling Emergent Gameplay a unicorn.  Many game developers have sought it, only a handful ever really find it.  What is Emergent Gameplay?

Well, simply put, it’s what happens when a game becomes more than the sum of its mechanics and story.  It’s more common in sandbox games like Minecraft or, in the case of this blog, No Man’s Sky.

If you’ve heard of No Man’s Sky, then chances are you have a strong opinion about it.  It’s been praised by a loyal handful, especially after the latest Pathfinder update, and scorned by many, with spiteful names like “No Man’s Lies”.   

Even I had a salty opinion of the game after I bought a brand new graphics card for it, only to have the game crash repeatedly over the course of several months.  I recently went back to the game after the aforementioned Pathfinder update, to find that the longstanding crash bug had finally been fixed.

I booted up the game, not expecting a whole lot more than what I had previously experienced: exploration and beautiful screenshots.  I was not disappointed in the latter, but what really caught me off guard is what happened about an hour into a new save.

I had named the planet “Paradise” because that’s what it seemed like, at first.  Gorgeous pink and purple flowers carpeted the ground everywhere you looked, and magnificent stone columns rose from the ground like ancient guardians.  A brilliant pink sky lit up the daylight and at night, everything turned a deep, vibrant red.

I spent an hour chasing signals, scanning the local flora and fauna, when I spotted a drop pod on the ground so I stopped to grab its contents – a free inventory slot.  Nice!  I jumped back in my ship and tried to take off.

“Insufficient fuel.”

No problem, I thought.  I’ll just go out and hunt some Plutonium.  I should mention at this point that the game relies on certain elements – some real, some invented for the game, to power various systems.  Launch thrusters on a ship require plutonium, and your exosuit’s life support requires an element called Thamium9, which grows on plants and, oddly enough, can be found while mining asteroids in space.

Plutonium is found on the ground in the form of red spiky crystals, and used to be extremely common.  Now, it seems, it’s rarer than a friendly wolverine.  

I spent another thirty minutes that night searching fruitlessly for plutonium.  I’d stop, scan the area using my scanning tool, then move in a random direction, stop, scan again.

I found a handful of abandoned outposts and waypoint markers, but nothing else.  Frustrated, I closed the game for the night.  I woke up around 2 am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to give it another go.

This time I picked one direction and followed it.  I soldiered on past high cliffs, great growths of iron spikes, lasher vines buried in the carpets of pink and purple flowers, past entire forests of strange, alien trees.  Still I couldn’t find any plutonium.

I wandered through every cave I could find, to no avail.  And then it happened.  That magical “Pl” symbol showed up on my scanner!  I was saved!

I ran over and mined up everything, elated, and then, I received the life support warning.  “Life Support at 25%”.

No problem.  I’ll just—Oh, wait.  I’m out of Thamium9.  CRAP.

I turned around very slowly and began to walk in a bee line back toward my ship.  20%, 15%.  With every step my life support drained.  I spent more energy trying to get past deep ravines.  10%.  No Thamium9 in sight.  5%.  0%.  I didn’t die immediately.

I soldiered on as my health plummeted.  Things were turning black-and-white, with red throbs as my health failed.  Finally, I collapsed less than 20 meters from my ship.

I sat and stared at the Game Over screen, breathless.  Yes, I died.  I lost hours of work.  And I was OKAY with it.  I had just experienced an epic fight for survival that took me across miles of terrain on foot, through abandoned bases, some full of those damn lasher vines, searching for rocket fuel so I could leave Paradise behind and never look back.

I have never felt so invested in a game.

Of course, then reality jerked me back from the precipices of Emergent Gameplay.  I respawned with full health, and a handy little waypoint telling me where to pick up all the stuff that I had just dropped when I died.

But consider this: the game offers a hardcore “Permadeath” mode.  Maybe next time?

Emergent Gameplay is a unicorn, and for one brief moment, I had it within my grasp, in a game maligned by some as “No Man’s Lies”.  I’ll never look at it, or any other survival sandbox, the same way again, though.