No Man’s Sky was a real mixed bag of a game. Impressive technology was arguably let down by repetitive gameplay and a lack of narrative. Taking those issues in mind though, developer Hello Games wants to help other projects avoid those problems, while still continuing to expand upon the idea of massive, procedurally generated game worlds.
Announced by Hello Games’ founder Sean Murray during a talk at this year’s Game Developer Conference, Hello Labs will look to fund and support one to two projects (with one said to already be in development) specifically focused on procedural generation.
Unfortunately what the funding and support will amount to is largely unknown at this time. The announcement came at the tail end of Hello Game’s talk and featured just one slide. It did however, include a very specific email address, which suggests that while Hello Labs is already aiding one project, it’s got its eyes peeled for a second, too (thanks to Ars Technica).
While those who still feel sore about the pre-launch promises and eventual release of No Man’s Sky, may wonder why developers would consider teaming up with Hello Games, the developer did highlight a number of issues it had dealt with around the game. It underestimated the game’s hype which lead to server issues post launch; it bit off more than its small team could chew with some aspects of development, and it didn’t create enough variety in its mathematically generated universe.
That latter point is the one which Hello Game’s stressed during its talk, highlighting how it had improved things by leaps and bounds with the recent Foundation update. It’s that side of development, as much as monetary and business aspects, that it wants to help others with — as well as avoiding the pitfalls it faced through No Man’s Sky‘s development.
