Hello Games founder Sean Murray took the stage at this year’s Game Developers Conference(GDC) to hold a presentation that focused on the inner-workings of the British developer’s 2016 exploration game No Man’s Sky. At the end of the presentation, Murray announced the launch of Hello Labs, a funding initiative geared towards developers that are working on games with procedural world generation, and experimental games as a whole.

Making really neat, weird engine decisions, and letting them dictate a cascade of problems: it’s cool for me to be able to stand up and say to talented people like yourselves, we’re looking for that kind of thing.”

The timing could not have been better, as No Man’s Sky had just received an award for Innovation from GDC. Chances are high that the award, which Murray was not around to accept, focused more on how expertly the game generated a seemingly limitless number of planets with only 300mb of data to go on, rather than the actual content of the game itself. To that end, Murray told his crowd at the GDC that his studio is going ‘all in’ on the future of procedural generation, with Hello Labs leading the way forward for aspiring developers. According to Murray, Hello Labs already has a project in development, and moving forward, the plan is to always be focusing on just one or two projects at a time.

Given that there was no shortage of controversy to be found in regards to No Man’s Sky, some may feel skeptical about the existence of Hello Labs. That said, with the amount of experience Hello Games has acquired in the wake of No Man’s Sky’s release, there is potentially no better developer to help usher in the future of games that utilize procedural generation. At this point, there will be pitfalls that Hello Labs will know to watch out for, and it will be up to them to ensure that their charges know to do the same.

So, what are your thoughts on Hello Labs? Do you think it’s a good idea or should the No Man’s Sky developer stick to making their own games? Let us know how you feel in the comments section below, and come discuss it with us on Disqus! As always, stay tuned to DFTG for all the latest gaming goodness, and follow us on Twitter for our 24/7 news feed!