Last night SXSW Gaming hosted their 2019 Gaming Awards show where the gaming community voted for the best games in a wide variety of categories. Among these categories, No Man’s Sky NEXT was nominated for “Most Evolved Game”. The Portal Repository is happy to report that No Man’s Sky won this award, beating other popular games like Destiny 2: Forsaken, Fortnite, Overwatch, and Pokemon Go.
As someone who has been playing No Man’s Sky since the 2016 release, it’s easy to see why Hello Games won this award. After a rocky launch, the developers behind No Man’s Sky were faced with a choice, listen to the constructive criticism of their fans and continue development, or listen to the disparaging comments and quietly let No Man’s Sky die. In the face of immense adversity Hello Games chose to double-down and show all the critics what the game had the potential to be.
A steady stream of free updates continued to roll out over the next several years, incrementally improving many aspects to the game. In the summer of 2018, just before the two year anniversary, Hello Games released an update titled NEXT, their most significant update since launch. NEXT was the result of general community feedback and direct player input from surveys sent out by Hello Games themselves during the Waking Titan ARG.
No Man’s Sky was also previously nominated for the “Labor of Love” Steam Award, and “Best Ongoing Game” at The Game Awards show. Although No Man’s Sky might not be all things to all people, Hello Games have demonstrated time after time that they listen to their dedicated fans and incorporate their feedback into each new (and free) update. It hasn’t always been rainbows and roses, but no one said evolution was painless. No Man’s Sky NEXT was the clear choice to win the “Most Evolved Game” award and Sean Murray and the developers at Hello Games should be very proud of this achievement.
