No Man's Sky has been synonymous with everything that has gone wrong about gaming. First, it was tagged as the most overrated game as of late and second, it was wracked with further controversies including a lawsuit. Despite these, however, there's not a doubt that it is the most influential game of 2016 whether you agree with it or not.
When talking about No Man's Sky being an influential force in the gaming industry, it talks about the general fallout of the game and how it affected the game industry in the future.
Most developers have admitted that one area No Man's Sky has affected the industry is how future games will be presented or discussed to the public. As one developer said, the lesson they learned from the game is never to say anything about the details of their games, not even the features that are in it. In short, just show but never tell. That's what exactly the mistake Sean Murray made with No Man's Sky - a lot of words have transpired and a lot of words have been used to described the game.
No Man's Sky was not the first game to fall victim because of too much use of words. Bungie used a lot of words even when they had no demo nor gameplay to show for. Even Activision's head honcho Eric Hirshberg made the mistake of saying a lot about the game describing it in a way that confused a lot of people because they had no idea what 'shared world shooter' actually meant. In the process, the gaming community had to make their own interpretations to those confusion, which resulted in a lot of misunderstanding. The result was disappointment.
This is the same mistake that a lot of developers are trying to avoid now. They don't want to follow the footsteps of the game leading gamers to think that their games will change the game landscape. That's what No Man's Sky did and everybody knows what happened in the aftermath.
