Sean Murray is a Hello Games member of the studio’s upcoming No Man’s Sky

Hello Games, famous for its controversial but ultimately beloved No mans skyI’ve been working on a few other games. Just last week, the developer launched The last campGreat adventure / puzzle game with style The Legend of Zelda (But without a fight.) But this isn’t the only project Hello Games is working on. Last week, studio founder Sean Murray spoke with Polygon about the team’s desire to keep creating new unfinished projects, including the title that Murray describes as “a huge and ambitious game like No mans sky. “

Hello Games turned into a smaller project like The last camp (Released now on all consoles, computers, and Apple Arcade) It might sound surprising given its success No mans sky. The team was expected to focus exclusively on making the biggest titles in the world. But Murray said that when he founded the studio, he and three other men were making the game they always wanted to make.

“I worked at EA before I started Hello Games, and we’ve just done several sequels,” Murray told Polygon. “Everything I worked on was complementary to something. I found it a bit disappointing in some ways. It was part of the reason for the move.”

Upon leaving EA, the studio’s first project was Joe DangerUnique, arcade game about a stunt racer, created by a team of four people. It ended up so successful that they, ironically, went ahead and made a sequel: Joe Danger 2.

“I’ve been through a little bit of a midlife crisis [after Joe Danger 2]Murray said. “This is what started No mans skyYou know, I panicked. I knew as a studio that I wanted to do this game No mans sky I eventually became, but I was like, What if I don’t and what if we keep doing the next thing and the next thing and life goes on. I was starting to think about having children and stuff, but I was like, Maybe that is? May I find myself in this treadmill forever? “

So Hello Games decided to make something big, quirky and ambitious that could still work within the structure of a small studio. For many No mans skyThe team consisted of only six people, and had expanded to 15 by the time of shipment. However, a small team was contemplating the hype over that game.

Hello Games is now 26 people. Only three of them made up the team at the back The last camp. The rest of the team is divided. One part of the remaining 23 continues the support No mans sky With updates. The other part is working on Hello Games’ next “big” project.

Murray doesn’t offer much detail, preferring to keep the next project in the loop for now. However, he does have ideas about lessons learned after the mess No Man’s Sky ‘s and whether he would do anything differently for this new project.

“There is this toxic goblet or demon dealing that I think any indie game developer would actually find a very difficult choice, right? The choice we had? No mans sky Where if I were to come again, I would have a great hard time knowing what was the right path. Since you will have a great interest in your game, you will have a great amount of excitement for it. But you’ll be in a rocket ship, zipping toward the sun, and building that rocket your way up.

And there is excitement and craze for that. Where we ended up playing the game, where we played hundreds of millions of hours and a really happy community and all that kind of thing, you know, I’m OK with this deal we made, right? “

But Murray admits there has definitely been a huge toll for his team in terms of their mental health after the negative reaction to the launch. He said, “It was a very difficult process, and I don’t want to force anyone to do it again.”

Thanks to the success No mans skyMurray says the team could be cooler with smaller versions such as The last camp. “We’re in the lucky position because this was mostly a creative effort … It’s totally different if you’re an indie studio that depends heavily on how people perceive your game in the first 30 seconds.”

So Murray prefers to follow the same great rhythm of the next big team No mans skySize project? Would it be better to shock everyone with a sudden release out of nowhere? He is not sure.

“I think about it a lot and don’t know where you came from. There is something really positive about talking about your game a lot. It attracts people interested in it who wouldn’t otherwise play it. We see that with No mans sky. We have appealed to a large number of people, not many of them would have known about the game otherwise, would they? If we sneakily shoot it or whatever, some of our biggest fans won’t even hear about it.

“So it’s very difficult. But I look back, after I’ve done a lot of different journalism opportunities and things like that. And I think describing what we did – and a lot of places where we had problems, I think, where we were gullible – we didn’t really need it.” To do and we could have achieved the same level of success, you know? This is my personal opinion. Right? Lots of opportunities were put before us, and we were told it was the right things to do, and I look back and I’m not sure it was Very important to the type of overall result. “