Post-launch support has become a bit of a beleaguered concept in gaming. On the one hand, title updates allow developers to digest community feedback and suss tweaks, additions, and other gameplay modifications that can help improve their games. In other ways, the ability to release updates after a game’s release often give license to developers to launch incomplete titles with the promise of adding features in the future.
If handled correctly, however, post-launch support can add new life to games throughout their life cycle. Online connectivity and ever-evolving game ecosystems have created a world in which a title can look entirely different even as little as a few months after its release. That’s the lightning in a bottle developer Hello Games hopes to capture with the latest update to No Man’s Sky which adds a 30-hour campaign, procedurally generated missions, and multiplayer.
If successful, No Man’s Sky will join a long list of games that used their ability to patch in features after their release to make not only a more polished game, but also a more robust one.
