Space Games Are BROKEN And It Needs To Change

Summary

Highlights

• Space games have not yet achieved the perfect balance of exploration and narrative. 🚀
• Elite Dangerous' scale is impressive, but it often feels empty and static. 🌌
• Star Citizen delivers immersion and detail but lacks a completed universe. 🌠
• No Man's Sky provides infinite world exploration at the cost of repetitive experiences. 🔄
• X4 Foundations offers a dynamic economy within a smaller, predictable universe. 💼
• Starfield's attempt to blend large worlds with story content is hindered by its fragmented design. 📖

Key Takeaways

• Space games struggle to balance vastness with engaging gameplay. 🚀
• Elite Dangerous nails scale but feels empty at times. 🌌
• Star Citizen aims for realism and immersion but lacks content. 🌠
• No Man's Sky offers endless exploration but becomes repetitive. 🔄
• X4 Foundations focuses on a living economy but lacks mystery. 💼
• Starfield tries blending exploration and narrative but feels fragmented. 📖

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Space Games The chapter discusses the persistent challenges faced by space games over the decades, noting that the genre seemed closer to solving these issues in the 1990s. Despite these challenges, space games continue to promise players the allure of the final frontier, offering the excitement of exploring entire galaxies and discovering alien worlds. The chapter mentions several titles, including Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, No Man's Sky, X4 Foundation, and Starfield, all of which aim to encapsulate the vastness and majesty of space exploration.
• 00:30 - 10:00: Problems and Challenges in Space Games The chapter titled 'Problems and Challenges in Space Games' discusses the inherent difficulties in creating space-based video games that effectively balance the vastness of space and engaging gameplay. It highlights the common problem of either making the game world too large, which can become dull and boring, or making it very detailed and interesting but losing the sense of grandeur. The challenge is in translating the majesty of sci-fi seen on screens into an interactive gaming experience.
• 10:00 - 19:00: Elite Dangerous: The Vast yet Empty Frontier This chapter discusses the duality of game mechanics and environmental design in space-themed games, specifically focusing on 'Elite Dangerous.' It explores the challenge of representing the vast emptiness of space in a way that is both engaging and true to reality. While the enormity of space can sometimes be a drawback in gaming, it also presents a unique allure and challenge in terms of scale. The chapter highlights how 'Elite Dangerous' embraces the massive scale by replicating the entire galaxy with meticulous precision.
• 19:00 - 27:00: Star Citizen: Immersion and Limitations The chapter "Star Citizen: Immersion and Limitations" explores the vastness of virtual space simulations in gaming, highlighting titles like Star Citizen, No Man's Sky, and Space Engine. Star Citizen offers a recreation of the Milky Way with approximately 400 billion star systems, indicating an immense play space that would ostensibly take players 30,000 years to explore fully. In contrast, No Man's Sky impresses with its procedurally generated universe of over 18 quintillion planets, while Space Engine simulates the entire observable universe, each creating an initial sense of awe and exploration.
• 27:00 - 35:00: No Man's Sky: Procedural Abundance and its Drawbacks This chapter explores the concept and execution of procedural generation in the video game 'No Man's Sky.' While the game boasts an impressively vast and varied universe thanks to its procedural engine, this abundance comes with its own set of drawbacks. As players traverse countless planets, the initial wonder can sometimes give way to a sense of sameness or lack of depth. The chapter may touch on how this approach contrasts with other space exploration games like Elite Dangerous, which emphasizes a different kind of vastness, focusing on the sheer scale and grandeur of celestial bodies rather than procedural diversity.
• 35:00 - 40:00: X4 Foundations: Simulation over Scale The chapter titled 'X4 Foundations: Simulation over Scale' discusses the awe-inspiring experience of exploring large-scale environments in the video game X4 Foundations. The narrator describes the magical, humbling, and profound sense of scale that the game delivers, likening it to the jaw-dropping spectacles seen in sci-fi films. However, the chapter also hints at drawbacks or challenges associated with this vast space exploration, referring to it as a 'double-edged sword.'
• 40:00 - 50:00: Starfield: A Fragmented Universe In 'Starfield: A Fragmented Universe,' the discussion revolves around the challenge video games face in depicting the vastness of space. Drawing from the observation in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' that space is indeed very large, the chapter highlights the additional problem of space being overwhelmingly empty. This emptiness poses a specific challenge for game developers, as efforts to portray the expansive nature of space often result in environments that feel barren and devoid of life. Elite Dangerous is cited as a particular example of this issue, where the grandeur of the game's universe can often seem static and lifeless, echoing a common grievance among players of space exploration games.
• 50:00 - 57:00: Emerging Projects: Starship Simulator and Space Engine This chapter discusses the challenges developers face when creating space simulation games that balance realistic space scale with engaging gameplay. The chapter uses Elite Dangerous as an example of a game that successfully creates a vast and immersive galaxy, but also highlights the potential pitfalls of such realistic scales, such as the risk of players becoming bored in a barren, expansive environment.
• 57:00 - 65:00: Challenges and Potential of Space Games The chapter "Challenges and Potential of Space Games" discusses the realistic depiction of space in gaming, highlighting the use of scientific elements to create immersive experiences. It touches on Elite's game mechanics, where stars have correct spectral classes, planets orbit in real-time, and faster-than-light travel is essential due to vast distances. The game evokes a sense of solitude and exploration, with players often feeling alone in the vastness of space. Players experience quiet moments, such as coasting above undiscovered planets, which contribute to the game's allure.

Space Games Are BROKEN And It Needs To Change Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 There's a very big problem when it comes to space games, and it's been here for decades at this point. Although, ironically enough, it seems that it was almost solved back in the '90s. That said, space games have always promised us the final frontier, entire galaxies to roam, alien worlds to discover, and the thrill of futuristic adventure. Titles like Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, No Man's Sky, X4 Foundation, Starfield, and many more all strive to capture the scale and grandeur of space, specifically exploration in space. Each
• 00:30 - 01:00 of these has certainly delivered some more inspiring moments. Yet, they all have one common problem that threads through each of them, and that is what to do and how to display the grandeur of space. But not only that, provide an interesting game with it. You either go large and become dull and boring or you go very interesting and detailed but you lose the grandeur. So why is it so hard to translate the grandeur of screen sci-fi into an interactive experience? The answer perhaps lies in how gameplay
• 01:00 - 01:30 mechanics and environmental design collide sometimes literally with the sheer emptiness of the enormity of space. In other words, uh, well, empty space can sometimes be a little bit of a problem when it comes to playing in a game. When it comes to that, the overall allure and challenge of scale, that's a thing that space games certainly get right. Space is big, mind-bogglingly big, and uh, these games don't shy away from that. Elite Dangerous famously takes place in a full one toone
• 01:30 - 02:00 recreation of the Milky Way with some 400 billion star systems. The play space is so vast that it's been said it would take players 30,000 years to chart all of it. No Man Sky meanwhile features a prostically generated universe with over 18 quintilian planets. Space Engine goes further simulating the entire observable universe. There's a sense of scout here when you first jump into these games that can be really staggering to say the least.
• 02:00 - 02:30 Now, Elite Dangerous certainly excels at conveying the enormity of celestial objects. You only have to get near a planet or a star or any other stellar object, and you'll find yourself dwarfed by ringed gas giants and blazing suns. And this gives somewhat of a profound feeling of being a tiny or being very tiny in an endless void. In fact, quite often in my exploration journeys in Elite Dangerous, I found that moment of quiet aura of floating in the shadow of
• 02:30 - 03:00 a planet, and it really was magical. It delivered a sense of scale that, well, felt quite unlike anything else. And considering that this is an experience from a video game, they turn out to be quite humbling and well, largely profound. It can be very similar to the kind of jaw-dropping spectacle we get from a well-crafted sci-fi film with specific scenes that we've probably all experienced and seen. Yet, Scout here is certainly a double-edged sword when it
• 03:00 - 03:30 comes to video games. As the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy famously put it, space is big. But we can add to that, space is empty. Now, by attempting to capture space's size, games risk capturing its emptiness, too. And this has been a problem specifically for Elite Dangerous. But other games as well, they kind of miss this. They kind of butt up against the wall here. It's a major complaint across the genre. And that's the that these massive worlds can feel empty, static, and lifeless. In
• 03:30 - 04:00 other words, if you assimilate space too realistically, well, that realistic scale can undermine gameplay. And here, developers are really tasked with finding ways to fill the void with things to do or risk players becoming bored. drifting through the dead wasteland. If any game embodies both the wonder and the pitfallers of both of realistic scale, it's Elite Dangerous. On the one hand, Elite Nails the feeling of a vast frontier. Its galaxy is incredible. It's immersive and well, in
• 04:00 - 04:30 a scientific sense, stars have proper spectral classes. Planets orbit in real time, and distances are so enormous that faster than light traveled via the game's frame shift drive is absolutely mandatory. When you're out exploring an elite, you feel truly alone in the darkness. In fact, it's a little wonder that so many players called it uh going into the black. And more often than not, you'll find yourself experiencing those quiet moments coasting above an undiscovered planet or hanging at the
• 04:30 - 05:00 edge of a nebula and can feel something very much out of 2001 of space odyssey. The games community here has countless screenshots and loads of gorgeous videos telling the tales of first discoveries and some truly amazing scenes. However, Elite Dangerous has also become the poster child of the worldwide inch deep problem. And this is something that you don't have to go too far online to actually see a quote that's all over the internet these days these days in regards to the game. And each galaxy,
• 05:00 - 05:30 for all its size, can often feel procedurally generated and devoid of meaningful interaction. And yes, some people argue that's probably what space is really like, although none of us can know for sure because no one's been out there that far. Nonetheless, science seems to suggest that is very likely the case. It's a design that speaks to the game's reliance on player imagination and emergent gameplay to create the content. There are no scripted campaigns with cutscenes or characters aside from
• 05:30 - 06:00 some textbased narrative events. Missions are mostly randomly generated and repetitive. V some goods on pirates, scan a planet after the stuff of epic space opera. In short, venture too far out of the inhabited areas of Elite Dangerous's galaxy and you'll soon end up feeling very lonely. And for some people, this may lead to a sense of aimlessness. And here players often speak of it being at the best space sim out there in theory yet never taking that next big step. The game it could
• 06:00 - 06:30 have been. How many of you have heard of people talking about Elite's potential? Now Frontier Developments has made efforts to deepen Elite Dangerous over time. For example, adding on foot exploration in the Odyssey expansion and then more recently adding the ability to colonize close by star systems. But without strong narrative or dynamic ecosystems, the amazing scale of elite sometimes ends up highlighting vast stretches of nothing. In a film or TV
• 06:30 - 07:00 episode, a spaceship crew might fill a downtime with dialogue or encounter a plot event every few minutes. In a leaked, you might literally be well cruising for super cruise for 10 minutes real time or much much longer depending on where you're going to reach that space station with very little to do. But look at the prettiest stars and nothing much besides. It's a game design philosophy that has really led to a league violating the 40 rule of open world design. The idea that the player should find something interesting
• 07:00 - 07:30 roughly every 40 seconds whilst traveling. Now, of course, space is big. You don't really expect to find something every 40 seconds, but this really comes down to the point I opened with that tension, that area of overlap between having a vast area and uh well also bringing in gameplay to match it. In Elite, minutes, half hour, more can sometimes go by in sterile silence. That's great for immersion in realism, but not great for entertainment. The result is that Elite Dangerous conveys
• 07:30 - 08:00 the emptiness of space a bit too well. It captures the feel of floating in a serene indifferent void, but struggles to deliver the lively narrative atmosphere of Star Wars or Star Trek or indeed pretty much any sci-fi opera novel. Now, if Elite Dangerous is one end of the spectrum, that's a massive finished game like in depth, Star Citizen is arguably the other. A still in development game bursting with depth and detail in a much smaller slice of space. Star Citizen's ambition, of
• 08:00 - 08:30 course, is legendary at this point, probably infamous for being a perfectly blunt about it. It aims to simulate a living sci-fi universe at an unprecedented level of detail. In many ways, it's trying to be the cure for elite shortcomings. Want to get out of your pilot's chair and walk around your ship's interior? In Star Citizen, you can. Every multi-deck ship is fully modeled, right down to the crew quarters and engineering bays. Want to land on a planet and stroll through a bustling
• 08:30 - 09:00 city and then take off again seamlessly? Star Citizen lets you do that, at least in the two star systems currently available. The game places very heavy emphasis on immersion. From detailed cockpits with full functional buttons to the act of physically getting out of your bed in your habitat when you log in, it's the kind of first person you are there experience that makes you feel like a character in the expanse or firefly. However, Star Citizen's weakness uh well, let's discount it as
• 09:00 - 09:30 bugs for the moment and many other areas there. But in terms of Star Citizen itself as it's intended after you've its weakness is that after you finishing in and are in at the sites, you might ask what now? As of 2025, the game remains in alpha and content is limited. Outside of some basic missions such as bounty hunting and delivery runs, combat skirmishes, as well as, of course, the now famous playerdriven antics, there's very little to do beyond the look at it
• 09:30 - 10:00 or get involved in very simple gameplay loops that become all too repetitive very, very quickly. In its current state, Star Citizen is an immersion sandbox, a stunning toy universe without the structured adventures that make something like Star Wars exciting. Now, the developers have an entire single player campaign here lined up. Squadron 42, which may be here this year, maybe here next year, maybe the year after, but until it's released, players are basically role- playinging their own
• 10:00 - 10:30 stories in Star Citizen as it stands right now. Now, of course, that is an achievement, but it's worth noticing that Star Citizen does address some nuances of space travel and environment that help with immersion. For example, travel times between planets or moons in a solar system is tangulous. You engage quantum drive and watch your ship cruise for minutes, not just a loading screen, and this creates anticipation and gives a sense of distance. What's more, you can get up out of your ship's seat and engage in other activities around your
• 10:30 - 11:00 ship, maybe with other maybe with other players or friends. Whilst this happens, you might even get pulled out of quantum by a pirate ambush. Not too dissimilar to interdictions in Elite Dangerous. And this, of course, is a dynamic event that breaks up travel. The game also populates its world with NPC ships, space stations, clouds on planets, making the environment feel less static than it leaves. But the worlds here are very, very nice. Arguably the best worlds in any sci-fi game. You'll find
• 11:00 - 11:30 forests, snowy areas, mountains, abandoned bases, cave systems, oceans, and much, much more. But despite these efforts, many players still report a feeling of emptiness. There's a difference between looking alive and being alive. Star Citizens Universe looks like a bustling sci-fi setting. Neon cityscapes on Ark Corp. crowded landing pads at Hurston. Yet much of it is window dressing. I don't think there's any argument there. The impressive city planet you see largely
• 11:30 - 12:00 is non-interactive. A non-interactive backdrop beyond the small landing zone that you can walk in. The NPCs are mostly inert when they're not standing on tables. Without a narrative or meaningful economic simulation, the grand illusion can feel hollow. To its credit, Star Citizens developers CI have plans to fill this with content, medium races, dynamic trading, more star systems, evolving storylines. But the game's protracted development, to understate it, means the well cinematic
• 12:00 - 12:30 moments players crave are still mostly aspirational. Right now, Star Citizen offers the feel of stepping into a Star Wars film, but it doesn't yet deliver a Star Wars caliber experience. It's an immersive tech demo growing into a game. So, like Elite, it nails atmosphere in the realistic sense, yet struggles to constantly evoke the emotional atmosphere of a greater sci-fi
• 12:30 - 13:00 world. And then there's No Man's Sky, which, well, it took a very different approach to space exploration. Instead of aiming for hardcore realism or multiplayer immersion, Hello Games went for procedural abundance. Billions upon billions of planets, each teaming with weird life forms, all generated by algorithms. No Man's Sky at launch famously promised the plan could go anywhere no one has gone before. To literally be the first step on foot of a countless alien worlds. In terms of
• 13:00 - 13:30 scown, the game succeeded. It universe is effectively infinite for a singleplayer purpose. And on day one, it did an excellent job of seamless transition from space down to atmosphere all the way down to ground. It colors saturated art style also gave it a distinct almost dreamlike atmosphere closer to a 1970s sci-fi novel cover compared to the hard vacuum realism of Elite. Over the years, No Man's Sky has evolved into a rich sandbox. It's
• 13:30 - 14:00 introduced to base building, story quests, multiplayer, and many new features. By 2025, it's arguably one of the most improved Aspire space games of all time. And having one bank players with multiple free updates. Still, when it comes to conveying the feel of true exploration, No Man's Sky has its own challenges. The very procedural generation that enables its vast scale also creates a sense of deja vu. Players often find that after a first few dozen
• 14:00 - 14:30 hours, well, planets start to blur together. You begin to recognize the jigsaw pieces. The game uses all of this to assemble creatures and landscapes. And even with the various different recent updates, Worlds Part One and Worlds Part Two, this still is a bit of a problem. It highlights a core issue. When discovery becomes routine, that magical sense of wonder fades. The game begins to feel more like touring variations of the same theme rather than discovering and discovering a truly unique frontiers. Of course, to be
• 14:30 - 15:00 perfectly fair here, No Man's Sky does a lot right. It provides accessible exploration with a chill vibe, and it has gradually added more curated content. These all help offset the procedural monotony by injecting a bit of narrative and lore. Yet, some players still echo the sentiment that No Man's Sky isn't a real space exploration game. at least not in the Star Trek sense. In other words, No Man's Sky, Earth's on the side of a busy universe. Every star system has a space station. Every planet
• 15:00 - 15:30 has some alien outpost or ancient ruin. This design ensures that the player always has something to interact with, but also paradoxically undermines the feeling of being a lone explorer. Unlike Elite, where you often truly find empty worlds and empty star systems, No Man's Sky populates virtually everything. Some fans actually crave a bit more emptiness for realism, barren star systems, rare life to make their own discoveries feel more special. The game does have
• 15:30 - 16:00 lifeless planets and extreme worlds, but they come the complaint here is that meaningful solitude is very hard to come by in No Man's Sky. The contrast between Elite Dangerous and No Man's Sky on this point is very telling, and it gives you emptiness, and players beg for something to happen. No Man's Sky gives you constant points of interest and some players begged for a quiet corner of the universe. And this here really does underscore the tension, the point that I'm trying to get at that it's really really super hard to strike the right
• 16:00 - 16:30 balance. To its credit though, No Man's Sky captures a more cinematic vibe at times than the pure simulationbased games. His vibrant pallets and orchestrated music can really make flying over a planet or waring between systems feel like a montage from a sci-fi trailer. Ultimately, A No Man's Sky succeeds in making a space exploration relaxing and visually intriguing, but it often fails to deliver the dramatic tension or deep curiosity that true exploration of
• 16:30 - 17:00 fiction inspires. The gameplay loop can slide into repetitive resource gathering and checklist objectives. Scan the 10 animals, fix the ship, get the fuel, repeat. And ultimately, to me at least, this runs counter to what I'd like to see in a deep exploration game. Moving on to X4 Foundations, we encounter a very different kind of space game, one that prioritizes a simulation
• 17:00 - 17:30 of a living economy and factions over sheer size. Egosoft's X series has always been about depth over breadth. XVO universe is relatively small. A few dozen star sectors connected by jump gates, not an entire galaxy, but it's densely packed with NPC ships, stations, trade routes, and of conflicts therein. In X4, you can build your own empire, construct stations, command fleets, influence wars between factions. In essence, it tries to deliver the fit in
• 17:30 - 18:00 of a living, breathing universe, but on a manageable scale. The advantage of this approach is that X4 rarely feels empty. Wherever you go, you'll see your ships coming and going, economies evolving, and the results of your actions persisting in the world. Explosion in X4 is more about uncovering what's happening in the universe rather than sightseeing natural wonders. When you enter a new sector, you might find an ongoing battle between aliens and the local military or discover an abandoned
• 18:00 - 18:30 ship to claim. These kinds of emergent events can create surprisingly cinematic moments. However, X4's focus on simulation can also be its weakness for those seeking that epic exploration vibe. Some players find this universe too small or too predictable. And for all the benefits that it does bring to the game, the game does forgo astronomical scale. You won't experience the aura of endless starfields or giant realistic planets up close. Planetary surfaces are just backdrops in X4. You
• 18:30 - 19:00 can't descend and explore them. So whilst X4's sectors are full of life, they might lack the mystery and grandeur of say finding a new world in Elite or No Sky. In terms of atmosphere, X4 leans more towards busy busy sci-fi sandbox than that lonely cosmos. It also has a steep learning curve and utilitarian presentation. You spend a lot of time in menus commanding assets which can break the immersion compared to a more firstperson perspective games. If Star
• 19:00 - 19:30 Citizen aims for you to feel like the pilot walking around your ship, X4 often makes you feel like the fleet admiral directing from afar or the trade tycoon managing spreadsheets. That's a different fantasy. Satisfying for those who love strategy and management, but not exactly the cinematic exploration saga. some might imagine. In short, every piece of empty space in X4 is just sitting there waiting to be used. It's real estate where the simulation might eventually place a new station or an encounter might occur. And this gives a
• 19:30 - 20:00 strong overlap between gameplay and environment. Travel is usually short between points of interest. Discovery is tied to finding resources or allies and enemies. And missions often involve interacting with dynamic factions. And that means the feeling of true exploration, that's venturing into the unknown, is muted because the map, whilst initially foggy, is predetermined and relatively limited. X4 does support that sense that you exist in a large universe with ongoing stories, arguably
• 20:00 - 20:30 far more so than any other title, but it does so at the expense of having a vast and imaginable universe. It's a trade-off. X4's universe might feel tangible and active, but rarely does it feel mysterious. Bethesda's Starfield was one of the most anticipated space games in recent memory, promising, well, one of the most recent anticipated games of all time really. And it promised to blend their
• 20:30 - 21:00 trademark RPG storytelling with a vast sci-fi setting. In concept, Starfield could have been the answer to the Elite versus Mass Effect dilemma. A game where both large space to explore and rich narrative content. That's really what it should have been. That's really what I was hoping it would be. The result, however, left many divided. Starfield does offer a lot. Over 1,000 planets across 100 star systems, numerous handcrafted quests, factions, and an
• 21:00 - 21:30 epic main story line. It also has realistic touches like scanning planets for resources and you can board other ships or build outposts on worlds. But, you know, in trying to do a bit of everything, Starfield struggled to truly satisfy the pure exploration of fans. One major critique is that Starfield's universe, whilst technically large, feels fragmented. You cannot fly seamlessly from a planet surface to space as you can in No Man's Sky or Star Citizen. Instead, Starfield is filled with loading screens, and you can use
• 21:30 - 22:00 fast travel menus and well, loading screens to hop between various different locations. And yeah, there's a lot of loading screens in case you missed that point. It's a design that means you lose the continuous sense of journey. Each area, a city, a moon, a section of space is essentially its own level, its own self-contained environment. And therefore, the scowl is there on paper, but the feel of scowl is diminished. Many players noted that despite the many star systems, Starfield didn't involve
• 22:00 - 22:30 the awe of vastness. You mostly engage with the one contained scenario at a time. The procedural planets themselves become controversial for being intentionally sparse. And Bethesda's Todd Howard and Ashley Chang even defended the decision to have empty baron planets, arguing that when the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored. The idea was to evoke realism. The intention of Starfield's exploration is to voke to evoke a feeling of
• 22:30 - 23:00 smallness in the players to make you feel the overwhelming scowl and loneliness of space. You know, yeah, it's a noble artistic goal. And indeed, it ties back to what we've previously said with Elite Dangerous. Unfortunately, what works for a few hours of NASA like wonder can become dull in a game that's meant to be played for hundreds of hours. Many players were bored by Starfield's empty worlds, calling them boring and empty. In other words, the game has huge map, but much of it felt copy and pasted and
• 23:00 - 23:30 ultimately inconsequential. The handcrafted content in Starfield, such as cities like Neon or New Atlantis, these were often wellreceived, but those two had moments that were separated by long stretches of unremarkable travel and fetch quests missions. Perhaps one of the biggest problems then is travel, which in Starfield often boils down to fast travel jumps, which must convenient further undercut the sensation of voyaging through space. There's little sense of danger or discovery to during
• 23:30 - 24:00 transit. No equivalent of being interdicted by a space pirate midw you do manually fly in space. The areas are relatively empty aside from the occasional generic encounter. Planetary exploration boils down to landing in a preset biome tile, scanning for resources or points of interest, and these are often repetitive or simply heading out and completing your mission, which more often than not are pretty basic. Starfield, therefore, demonstrates another key point. The
• 24:00 - 24:30 overlap between gameplay mechanics and environmental design when it comes to space must support a sense of discovery or exploration, otherwise it will feel very shallow. Bethesda included plenty of environmental content such as plants, minerals, random outposts, but the gameplay around them, scanning rocks and looting containers can feel like busy work and it's something unique happens. Some players found joy in role playing as space miners or scientists, but many found that Starfield's advertised
• 24:30 - 25:00 freedom didn't live up to true exploratory experience. I think perhaps the takeaway message here is that what Starfield teaches us is that even when you add a strong narrative backbone, which attempted with mixed results, if the exploitative game play in between story beats isn't compelling, players will disengage. The game ended up pleasing those who enjoy Bethesda RPG formula, not all of those people. Uh, but it underdelled for those who dreamed of a NASA meets Star Trek, a seamless
• 25:00 - 25:30 trek through the stars. Now, before we move on to some other concepts, it's also worth touching on two outliers in this overall conversation, and these are Starship Simulator and Space Engine. These aren't as widely played. They're not really perhaps as widely known as the other titles already discussed, but they represent extreme attempts to capture aspects of space that other games only partially achieve. Starship Simulator, which is currently in development, is
• 25:30 - 26:00 aiming to combine the strong points of many space games into one. As the developer pictures it, there are many great space sims out there. Some feature beautiful ship interiors, some stunningly realistic galaxies, and others have impressive simulated ship systems, but the space sim genre lacks a title that features all of the above. Until now, that is. The goal is a fully crewable starship. Think Star Trek Bridge Simulator in a scientifically accurate 1:1 scale galaxy with no
• 26:00 - 26:30 loading screens. You would perform roles which can be captain, engineer, or any other crew member and maintain the ship on a long voyage encountering alien species and mysteries along the way. Now, in theory, Starship Simulator wants to deliver the holy ground, the immersion of walking in your ship, Star Citizen style, and the scowl of a whole galaxy elite and space engine style. and the gameplay depth of managing ship systems and crew. Something like a
• 26:30 - 27:00 starship roleplay. It explicitly draws inspiration from the starship voyages of a popular sci-fi complete with first contact scenarios and unknown dangers in the dark. Will it succeed? Well, it remains to be seen, but the mere fact that such a project exists shows the appetite for a more holistic space experience. It's trying to address the missed opportunities of its predecessors. For instance, Alic Dangerous Never let players roam their ship's interior or have NPC crew that
• 27:00 - 27:30 well they could actually directly interact with and move about on board their ships with. And this could have provided those interpersonal moments between long travels. Starship Simulator plans to have 200 plus rooms on the ship and even mundane roles like chef or doctor for the crew and these could field the quiet times with ro specific tasks and social interactions. This is very much the Star Trek ethos. The journey is as important as the destination and every crew member has a part to play. If done well, it could
• 27:30 - 28:00 solve the problem of empty travel by making the ship itself a rip a rich environment to live in. On the flip side, it might inherit the challenge of nowhere to go. If the galaxy, however, isn't filled with engaging encounters. The press info promises countless alien civilizations and unique procedural objects to collect, which sounds great, but delivering that level of content with a small indie team will certainly be a challenge. It's an ambitious attempt to fulfill the dream that so
• 28:00 - 28:30 many space games have only partially delivered, and this one is perhaps one of the titles, the space exploration titles I'm most keen to fully experience once the entire thing is fully realized. At the opposite extreme is Space Engine, which isn't a game at all, but a pure simulation. Space Engine gives you the entire universe to explore with jaw-dropping realism. Stars, galaxies, nebula, planets, all rendered and reachable seamlessly. It's the ultimate tool to soar through the cosmos. Now, if
• 28:30 - 29:00 you want to feel the true scale of the universe, Space Engine delivers it like nothing else. You can descend from intergalactic space all the way to the surface of an ADM planet in one continuous journey. The catch, there's absolutely no gameplay, no objectives, no story, no ships to manage. Well, there are some ships you can use, but not in the sense of ships like you might have to do activities within Elite Dangerous or Starship Simulator. Ultimately, it's just you and the universe. And as fans will tell you, Space Engine isn't a game. It's a
• 29:00 - 29:30 sandbox. So, you know, that's that's a fair point. That is its goal. For some, this is incredibly liberating and it's very much zen-like. You can treat Space Engine as a virtual planetarium taken in at the wonders of creation as at your own pace. In fact, many Space Engine fans almost entirely roleplay as cosmic cinematographers. There's a whole ton of extremely beautiful movies out there on YouTube all filmed in Space Engine. River Space Engine underscores the idea
• 29:30 - 30:00 that ore alone doesn't sustain engagement for everyone. Without interactivity or challenges, the experience, while certainly mesmerizing, lacks purpose. It's basically the ultimate realization of the problem we've discussed. Space is huge and beautiful, but empty of gameplay. Space Engine chooses to embrace that fully and much to its own credit. And this worked really, really well for Space Engine. It's all of beauty and emptiness and leaving your imagination to fill the rest. As a result, it achieves an
• 30:00 - 30:30 amazing immersive atmosphere, but naturally offers nothing in terms of narrative or progression. That's not the point of it. But it is an extreme case showing that even if technology can give us the scene, it takes game design to give us the [Music] story. Looking across these titles, we see a common tension. Freedom versus narrative, realism versus cinematic license. Sci-fi franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars, and The Expanse captivate us with more than just pretty
• 30:30 - 31:00 planets. They give us characters, conflicts, drama, and a tightly woven story. They also aren't shy about bending realism. A Star Wars film will happily ignore the true vastness of space in order to pack in thinning encounters. Think the Millennium Falcon ready spending a day traveling in boredom. Something always happens on route. Star Trek's Enterprise might traverse light years in a single scene transition because the plot needs to get to the next adventure. And these franchises leverage the idea of space
• 31:00 - 31:30 but pace events to keep viewers engaged and emotions high. Space games, especially open world sandboxes, often on the side of authenticity and playerdriven pacing. They give you the sandbox and say, "Make your own adventure." And this can lead to incredible player stories, but also long stretches of nothingness that script writers for TV would never include. In a game, you spend an hour trucking minerals for trade missions. That's an hour where you have to provide the interest, maybe by enjoying the view or
• 31:30 - 32:00 chatting with friends or even watching a Netflix on a second monitor. There's no scripted tension or dialogue to fill the gap. Achieving a cinematic atmosphere in a game therefore requires either dynamic content that reacts like a story, which is very hard to do procedurally, or a restriction of player freedom to deliver setpiece moments, which sandboxes tend to avoid. Games that have tried to hybridize narrative and open space often split the difference. For example, the
• 32:00 - 32:30 Wing Commander and Freelancer series gave players well ex exploration, but also a linear story campaign to follow. and that yielded some cinematic moments but limited the scope of the universe. Modern titles like Starfield also tried this hybrid approach. Handcrafted quest arcs embedded in a broad universe and we saw the mixed outcome of this. The truly cinematic space games tend to be the linear ones like Mass Effect or Halo, but those sacrifice the open exploration
• 32:30 - 33:00 as aspects. Another aspect of the role of mission and environmental design is in invoking exploration. Players yearn for missions that feel like discoveries, not errands. A patrol mission in a leaked or Star Citizen where nothing novel happens can feel hollow, and this is all too common. Whereas a mission that leads you to to a devil ship drifting in an asteroid field with some mystery aboard can ignite that expanselike intrigue. And this ultimately is the problem, and it's a very tricky one. And it's something that
• 33:00 - 33:30 sandbox games really need to really think about. They struggle to produce these scenarios frequently without actually scripting them. X4 occasionally succeeds by virtue of its simulated wars and random encounters. You might stumble on things organically, but games could push this further. It's a missed opportunity that most of these titles don't have more procedural storytelling, emergent missions where you truly discover unique phenomena such as spatial anomalies or unknown life forms and that these might require
• 33:30 - 34:00 investigation or dynamic distress which kick off multi-art adventures. And then we come to environmental variety which can also play a role. Sci-fi movies, for example, often put characters in extreme and memorable locations. an ice planet, a glittering nebula cloud, the surface of a rotating asteroid with games constrained by algorithms or budgets may repeat biome types. No Man's Sky has worked on this set in a bizarre worlds and more varied extreme conditions to recapture that feeling of what is this
• 34:00 - 34:30 place, this mystery, this unusual location I find myself in, especially with the recent updates. And it does it very well. And without that variety, worlds can blur together and nothing feels special, which kills the spirit of exploration. Lastly, interaction and life in the universe are vital. In The Expanse, every space station or ship is filled with people who have agendas. In many space games, stations are static menus or empty hallways. The absence of meaningful NPC interactions in games
• 34:30 - 35:00 like Elite Dangerous where NPCs are dull and flat really leaves you with a missing layer. Star Citizen and Starfield recognized this and added cities and outposts with NPCs in them, but the depth of those NPC interactions is still shallow compared to a scripted story. The genre could benefit from more efforts to simulate civilization. Imagine hitchhiker NPCs, random friendly aliens, or encountering arrival explorer characters out in the black who chat and trade with you. These touches could
• 35:00 - 35:30 bring a bit more humanity or spontaneity to the vast impersonal void. Space games then have certainly come a long way. We've gone from a pixelated planets in the 1980s elite to entire galaxies in the 2025. Each modern title we've discussed excels in some facet of space exploration. Elite Dangerous gives us scale and authenticity. Star Citizen gives us immersion in detail. No Man's Sky gives us variety and accessibility. X4 gives
• 35:30 - 36:00 dynamic world simulation. Starfield gives narrative content and Starship Simulator promises to blend immersion with cooperative roleplay. The problem is that no single game has yet woven all of these strengths into one package that also captures the heart and soul of cinematic sci-fi adventure. We get glimpses of it. A dog fight that feels like Star Wars here. A view that feels like Interstellar there, but the consistency isn't there. The missed opportunities in this genre then largely
• 36:00 - 36:30 revolve around integration. integrating story with sandbox, integrating human elements with vast environments, integrating challenge with wonder, and it's understandably difficult. Simulating a universe and writing a compelling story line are each monumental tasks on their own. But as technology and design advance, the line between procedural and handcrafted content may blur. Future space games or updates to current ones might use a smarter algorithms to generate mini stories or leverage online community
• 36:30 - 37:00 events to create a narrative. The hopeful takeaway is that the dream is alive and well. The fact that so many games keep iterating on the formula means developers and players want that ultimate space experience. They want the scowl without the tedium, the freedom with a dash of narrative meaning, the realism but punctured by cinematic excitement. Each title has caught valuable lessons about the uh what inspires ore and what induces boredom. And as these games continue to evolve
• 37:00 - 37:30 and new ones emerge, we edge closer to a time when jumping into space games might truly feel like stepping into your favorite sci-fi saga. For now, the problem with space games isn't that they lack emotion or ambition. If anything, they are too ambitious. Sometimes way too ambitious. The challenge is really in harnessing that ambition and focusing it into depth where it counts. Space is a canvas so fast that it tempts developers to paint thousands of pictures at once. A better approach
• 37:30 - 38:00 might be to paint a few and make each truly remarkable. A tighter scope with more meaningful content might ultimately feel bigger to players than a galaxy full of superficial encounters. Modern space games then have given us the stars but not always the stories. They capture the silence of space but sometimes miss its song. The potential to marry the two is clearly there shimmering on the horizon like a distant galaxy. We can imagine a gamer, perhaps a future update or a nextG title where
• 38:00 - 38:30 you and your friends stand on the bridge of a ship, issued the order to jump and watch the Starlines streak by and know that something amazing and unexpected and meaningful lies ahead on the other side. It's a dream game, but one I hope is there in the not too distant future. Do let me know your thoughts and feelings about all of this in the comments section below. And thank you to everyone who's watched this exceptionally long video all the way through to the end. It was well it was a long one, wasn't it? There is another one on the screen right here if you want
• 38:30 - 39:00 to hang around and check that out. Thanks again. I catch you next time and do take care.