What can businesses learn about hype from No Man’s Sky?

Consumer hype for a particular product or service can be great in sensible quantities, but let it run rampant and, like an overfed and over-stoked fire, it will burn everything.

Earlier this month, a game called No Man’s Sky (NMS) was released for PlayStation 4 and PC. I won’t go into too much detail as this isn’t a review, but NMS promised to offer players boundless, near-infinite explorative possibilities in a seemingly boundless and near-infinite universe complete with stars and planets and faster-than-light travel.

Post-release the game has attained marmite-like status, with reviewers and players alike sharply divided. Safe to say, NMS did a ton of things right and a ton of things wrong.

I bought it on launch day and I’ve been wondering since: would people’s perception of the game, their conclusions after playing, have been different had it not been totally – and I really do mean totally – over hyped?

It got me thinking that the exact same thing could happen to any B2C company, particularly as we live in an age where anyone can bring their products or services to market through crowdfunding and other consumer-backed routes.

NMS is, after all, a product, and its creator, Guildford-based development studio Hello Games, is a small business employing only a handful of staff.

I believe a company could use hype to its advantage, drumming up brand/product awareness and consumer excitement while at the same time keeping the beast tamed and under control.

What would that mean? Transparency, honesty, promoting without over-selling – being clear about what the product does and what it does not do. What it is and what it isn’t. Being clear, also, about the target audience – who will enjoy it and benefit from it, who should look elsewhere.

To use No Man’s Sky as an example, it’s my belief that the developers weren’t totally clear (or as clear as they could’ve been) from the outset regarding the game’s multiplayer function. As a result, a heck of a lot of people had misconceptions about NMS from very early on. Sure, the developers were quite clear about the game’s multiplayer side later, much closer to release day. But by then, I think, the misconceptions were too deeply etched.

Even if development studios don’t learn from No Man’s Sky, I think a lot of players will. Swathes of disappointed people will probably approach the next super-hyped video game with a pinch of salt. That could actually be a good thing – both for consumers and for the businesses making the games.